


turn the score sideways

by misandrywitch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bitty pov, Graduation, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 01:58:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6101074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a line, and Bitty lives his life on one side of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turn the score sideways

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS UNEDITED I WROTE IT IN AN HOUR IN CLASS I AM DYING

Bitty walks back to the Haus by himself and nobody sees him rub the tears furiously from his eyes as he goes and he’s as thankful for that as he can be for anything right now. It’s a beautiful day, clear and warm with a blue blue sky. The summer is ready and waiting before him, free of homework and final exams and any kind of real obligations, and usually that would delight him. But it doesn’t.

He’s told himself over and over and over again not to get his hopes up, and he’s not very good at taking his own advice.

There’s a line and Bitty’s always walked with one eye on it. He toes it sometimes, considers the distance. Sometimes it gets farther away, sometimes less immediate, but he always keeps it in sight because what choice does he have?

He can’t help throwing his arms around Jack’s shoulders because Jack is smiling at him in his graduation gown, and his eyes are so blue, and this might be the last chance Bitty gets to do this. Another day he might not but this is so final, a real ending, a period at the end of this sentence that isn’t going anywhere else. He doesn’t expect Jack to bend down so they’re close to the same level and he doesn’t expect Jack to lean into it, let Bitty drop his head into Jack’s chest with his arms around his shoulders. Something inside of Bitty’s chest stutters because there isn’t any way to hide this in pretense, nothing to hide behind hockey-fueled excitement or even (and Bitty still thinks about this, Jack’s shoulders under his hands after their loss) the consolation of what it means not to come out on top. This isn’t that. There isn’t anything between them other than the idea that things aren’t going to be the same and they’re going to miss each other. Bitty knows that much is true.

 

 

 

 

His entire body should be on edge, should be telling him this is just a little bit too far, but he can’t help putting his head into Jack’s shoulder. He can feel Jack’s heartbeat through his dress clothes and his graduation gown, Jack’s hands on his back and his shoulders under Bitty’s own hands, Jack take a very deep breath and hold it. Bitty doesn’t know how he’s slipped into this situation, so defined by hands on vertebrae and the weight of Jack’s hands around his waist and on his back. And the longer they stay here the longer this moment extends and the farther away this is from an interaction that isn’t tinged with something more. The space between them should be electric, delicate, dangerous. It isn’t. It should be.

There isn’t a way to make a moment last forever, and this moment, as all moments do, ends. Bitty wants to cling onto it, but he knows a lot about asking for too much and he won’t, not this, not now.

Jack straightens up and Bitty lets him go, and nothing changes. The space between them is still so intimate and there are hundreds of people out here on the quad but it feels, just for a second, like they are the only two people in the entire world. It’s the way every early morning checking practice felt. How Bitty had felt, the whole rest of the day, after Jack had looked down at him and smiled and said “Happy birthday, Bittle.”

 

 

 

 

 

Bitty tries to say it. He does. He really does. He doesn’t look Jack in the eye and he stares at the grass between their feet and his heart is somewhere up in his nasal cavity, beating out an out-of-control measure of the seconds going by. He can feel it in his throat and his stomach and against the roof of his mouth, against his eyelids and the water gathering at the corners of his eyes, and right where Jack’s hands are still resting on his lower back.

There’s a line, and it’s one of the few things that Bitty knows without a doubt he understands.

 

 

 

 

 

So he doesn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly, it might be easier if he never sees Jack again, because that would be that, wouldn’t it? Bitty is pretty good at not getting what he wants. He’s used to it. Sometimes the line feels so large and solid that it’s more like a wall, and Bitty knows—he knows—that the only thing you get from running into it over and over and over again is hurt.

There are a thousand things Bitty wants to say and a thousand ways he’s imagined it, daydream nonsense when he lets himself think about it at all, right before he’s falling asleep or when he’s all by himself in the warm sunny kitchen. But daydreams aren’t real and you never have to say them out loud.

 _Playing on this team with you has been the best experience I’ve ever had,_ but he can say that, because they are teammates, Jack’s his captain. Jack said it himself, even.

“It’s been great playing with you,” he’d said into Bitty’s neck, because it had been. They’d been good. Bitty’s never felt like that about anything else before, being the other half of a team, knowing someone relies on you and you can be there to back them up.

But that isn’t really what Bitty means. What Bitty means is _I have feelings for you_ or _I think about you and it’s like there’s a light inside of my body_ or _I never thought I’d feel like this about anybody and I know I can’t have it, I know, but I can’t help it. I can’t._

But how can you say that out loud? How can you put any of it into words that mean anything or matter? Bitty talks a lot but he can’t even begin to think about the right combination of words to capture that. And even if—even if—then there’s the matter of saying them out loud.

There’s a line. And saying it out loud would put Bitty right out on it, with nothing to fall back on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So he doesn’t. He walks home. Nobody sees him cry. If Jack had, Jack didn’t say anything about it.

 

 

 

 

 

The Haus is locked and quiet, empty. Bitty slips through the front door and closes it behind him, kicks off his shoes. Turns on the lights. Jack and Shitty moved their things out this morning though a lot of Shitty’s stuff is stacked in the living room in garbage bags and one giant pink duffle. Bitty’s own suitcase is sitting in the kitchen and his shuttle takes off in an hour. It all feels so final. He walks into the kitchen and takes one very deep breath, and resigns himself to acceptance. It feels so inevitable that it’s almost funny, and Bitty is very good at not getting what he wants.

How do you go from being one of the only two people in the world? How do you go from being one half of a well-coordinated team? How do you live with the fact that there's always going to be a dividing line between you and everyone else, between what you want and what you get, between what you dream and what you actually have to live with?

Those are good questions. 

It's an end of things, but things don't end, and Bitty sits on the kitchen floor with his head in his hands for twenty minutes before something happens that makes him remember that he does have to catch a flight, head on home. 

Bitty hears a door slam open in the Haus somewhere, and jerks himself upright, wiping at his face fast with the cuff of his sleeve. His reflection, stretched and distorted in the window glass, looks back at him, blotchy-eyed and red. It’s Shitty, probably, or Lardo, or Shitty and Lardo and lots of Knights (who are—and Bitty does try his best not to have a bad word to say about anyone—just as bad as Shitty has eluded, except for his mother, who is lovely). Lardo’s company would be great, Shitty’s fine too though he might cry again, but he doesn’t particularly want to be seen crying alone in the kitchen in the empty Haus by anybody right now.

So he takes a deep breath and wipes his eyes again, straightens his tie and smoothes his hair back, looks his own reflection in the eye. “Pull yourself together, Bittle,” he says firmly in the ‘shape up or ship out’ tone of voice his dad uses when he’s coaching. He doesn’t buy it, but he doesn’t have to. There are footsteps in the entranceway coming towards the kitchen, and he turns around and smiles as he goes. He’s sure it’s unconvincing

“Hey, I didn’t expect y’all to be back so--- oh.”

His own surprise cuts himself off and he’s left with his mouth hanging open. Bitty can almost always think of something to say. Because it’s not Shitty or Lardo or Shitty’s family, or Ransom and Holster, or any of the frogs.

It’s Jack.

Bitty stares at him. 

Jack is red-faced and out of breath, hatless, his robe all in disarray and his tie askew. Bitty thinks about how he'd straightened it once already and wants to cry all over again but he doesn't. Jack-- it seems like he's run here, thrown the door open with a bang and how he's standing in the kitchen staring at Bitty like he hasn't really seen him before. His eyes are huge and blue. Bitty lives in a treacherous body and it betrays him because his heart is going a mile a minute and all that's probably going on is that Jack has forgotten his favorite pair of socks. 

"Hi," he says shortly, coughs. He looks flustered. Nervous? Bitty feels lightheaded, almost hysterical, and there's no reason to feel like that at all unless-- 

There's a line, and Bitty lives his life on one side of it. He's always been scared of crossing it. He's scared now. 

"Hi," he says, breathless, terrified, hopeful. 

Jack smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from 'mountain climbing' by frank o'hara: 'lead me always upward, my true darling, and never mind the bus faire.'
> 
> im ready for friday & ready for death.
> 
> werewolvesgimmick.tumblr.com


End file.
